Effect of Emotional Word Processing on Communicative and Social Functioning in the Elderly

Abstract

Introduction: Communicative and social functioning in old age involves cognitive and emotional resources. According to the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (tss), older adults have an affinity for positive events and cultivate their emotional skills. Objective: To explore the relationship between communicative and social functioning and the processing of emotional stimuli in the elderly. Materials and methods: Older adults and young adults performed a computerized lexical decision task (ldt) and were assessed on their communicative functioning. Results: There were statistically significant differences in the valence factor, with faster processing of stimuli with emotional versus non-emotional content (2196 = 36.39, p